George
Kennan, 101, Cold War Strategist And Diplomat, Dies

Matthew
Hersh

George F. Kennan, former American ambassador, Professor
Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, and expert on the
history of Russia, the Soviet Union, and U.S.-Soviet relations,
died Thursday at his home in Princeton Township. He was 101.

An
innovator and leader in international affairs up to his death,
he was honored in 2004 by then Secretary of State Colin Powell
in a celebration that recalled the diplomat's role as a leading
architect in U.S.-Soviet relations throughout the Cold War.

"Many
people said that perhaps Ambassador Kennan was the beneficiary
of a lucky guess. Not so," Mr. Powell said in his presentation
last February at Princeton University. "His prediction was
the manifestation of genuine wisdom."

Mr. Kennan, 1925
graduate of Princeton University, joined the faculty at the Institute
in 1956, where he had been a member since 1953. He was the author
of 17 books, two of them Pulitzer Prize-winning, and wrote a myriad
of articles on international relations. He was probably best known
as the author of the so-called "Long Telegram," an 8,000-word
telegram dispatched from Moscow to Secretary of State James Byrnes
in February 1946 outlining a strategy on how to handle diplomatic
relations with the Stalin-ruled Soviet Union. That telegram essentially
became the groundwork of the Cold War, and, according to Mr. Powell,
Mr. Kennan forecast the outcome with pinpoint accuracy: "When
the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, it did so exactly as
Ambassador Kennan [said] it would in predictions he made 45 years
earlier."

In the commentary that accompanied an exhibit
at Firestone Library, the telegram's eighteen pages that made
up the foundation of international relations policy for decades
to come merited the same recognition as "Washington's farewell
address, the Monroe Doctrine, the Open Door Notes, and Wilson's
Fourteen Points," and stated that while the Soviet Union
may not be receptive to diplomacy, it was by no means impervious
to force. In the telegram's follow-up work, The Sources of Soviet
Conduct, Mr. Kennan, writing under the pseudonym of "X,"
forwarded the idea that an effective counter to Soviet -aggression
toward Western powers was diplomacy, but not war. His writings
would eventually set the foundation for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization in 1949.

The telegram also gave rise to the
U.S. policy of containment toward the U.S.S.R. that thrust Kennan
into a life-long role as a Cold War authority. Mr. Kennan, however,
was never pleased that the policy he created was associated with
the arms build-up of the Cold War, as he later wrote in the Truman
Doctrine.

And while Mr. Kennan believed in the fundamental
truth behind his policy of containment, he would be confounded
by misinterpretations of his writings, as he later expressed in
a 1996 CNN interview: "My thoughts about containment were
of course distorted by the people who understood it and pursued
it exclusively as a military concept; and I think that that, as
much as any other cause, led to [the] 40 years of unnecessary,
fearfully expensive and disoriented process of the Cold War."

It
was while he was a member of the Institute faculty that Mr. Kennan
twice received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
for Russia Leaves the War, Vol. 1 (1956), and Memoirs, 1925-1960
(1967).

"George Kennan's long and distinguished professional
life has been one of uncommon achievement in both statecraft and
scholarship," said Peter Goddard, director of the Institute.
"His record of accomplishment is remarkable in its breadth
and depth."

While with the Institute, Mr. Kennan served
as Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952, and then as Ambassador
to Yugoslavia from 1960 to 1963.

Mr. Kennan became a professor
emeritus of the Institute's School of Historical Studies in 1974.
At the time, he offered his success since joining the faculty
largely to the Institute itself: "I can find no adequate
words in which to acknowledge the debt I owe this institution."

Mr.
Kennan was born on February 16, 1904 in Milwaukee. In addition
to his two-time Pulitzer Prize recognition, his awards throughout
his century-spanning life include the 1976 Princeton University
Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Nation's
Service; the 1981 Albert Einstein Peace Prize; the 1982 German
Peace Prize; the 1989 Presidential Medal of Freedom; and the 1994
honor of the Distinguished Service Award from the Department of
State. He also received 29 honorary degrees.

Mr. Kennan's
family has informed the Institute that a memorial service will
be held on Wednesday, April 6, at 11 a.m. at the Washington National
Cathedral in Washington, D.C.